


these old wounds bleed blue

by inkedinserendipity



Series: A Critical Collection [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 'a seed of chaos', Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, every time the traveller says his love is conditional on her being, i'm watching him., post ep45, someone please tell jester it's okay to be sad, the kill bill sirens in my head get a little louder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 02:21:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkedinserendipity/pseuds/inkedinserendipity
Summary: After the fight with the dragon, Beau notices a crack in Jester's mask.Someone needs to tell her that it's okay to be sad sometimes. That they're family, now, and they won't leave her behind.





	these old wounds bleed blue

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "Character A notices that Character B is faking their smiles”.
> 
> Beau and Jester are just _so good,_ guys.

“It’s okay to be sad, you know.”

Jester jumps. She’d almost forgotten Beau was in her room. In her defense, she’s been drawing, and she  _likes_  drawing — the straight lines and the contrasting swirls and the calming hatch of shading, it’s lots of fun, and calms her nerves. Not that her nerves need calming, of course! She’s very calm right now. Even the room around her is rocking her gently, like her mother used to a very very long time ago when she would sing Jester to sleep. Like the ocean is trying to help her breathe.

Okay, so maybe the ocean tried to kill them only a few days ago, when they found the sunken wreck and that old ghost Dashilla. And maybe her analogy has to fall apart a little bit. But the point is! She’s fine, really!

So she tells Beau that, and smiles to match. She has it on very good authority that she has a very nice smile. Blude told her that when she was much younger, and now Fjord tells her sometimes, and Caleb too, and Nott likes her smile a lot but doesn’t say it as much because she doesn’t want to hear it in return, which is sad but makes sense, because Jester knows that Nott doesn’t like her body.

But Beau doesn’t smile back, which makes Jester want to frown a little, even though she doesn’t. “I’m fine,” she insists, still smiling. Her jaw hurts. “Really, Beau! We all got out alive, even though Fjord was kinda a dummy and a  _dick_  when he left us all behind, but I’m okay, and everyone else is too!”

“You almost died,” Beau points out bluntly. 

Jester thinks her face does something funny, because Beau winces. She hastily rearranges the smile back on her face. “Yeah, but I  _didn’t_.”

“But you almost did.” Beau sets aside her own book — the diary, Jester thinks, the one Caleb decoded — to face her. Beau moves strangely, not the slip-shuffle of most people, who move one limb at a time, but the fluid grace of an entire body moving as a single whole. Jester doesn’t think Beau even knows she does it. Jester doesn’t think Beau even knows how cool she really is. “We left you behind.”

“You didn’t mean to.”

“I know I didn’t,” she says. Jester keeps her sketchbook stubbornly open, facing toward the door. She doesn’t really want to have this conversation right now. Or ever. “If I’d known that stupid thing was gonna take me out of the room, I wouldn’t have — I would never leave you, Jess. Not on purpose. But you got left behind, and that sucks.”

“It definitely did suck,” Jester says easily. “But now it’s over, and we’re all here, and I’m fine.”

Beau frowns. “Are you, though?” she says. “’Cause you don’t seem fine.”

“I’m smiling, aren’t I?” Jester asks, a little indignant. “I’m  _very_ happy _._ I don’t know why you would ever think I was sad.”

“Maybe because you never are,” Beau replies, which makes Jester pause for a second. Beau smiles sadly, one little lift of one little corner of her mouth. “Everyone gets sad sometimes. And I’ve never seen that on you, and I…I’m worried about you.”

“Well, don’t be,” Jester says, voice catching in her throat for some reason. “Because I’m alive and everyone is fine and the dragon — the dragon is dead.”

“Its memory isn’t.”

Jester flinches involuntarily, remembering – because the dragon had been scary. She’s not ashamed to admit that! The dragon was big, and blue, but much bigger and bluer than she was, and for a couple of seconds in that ball, Jester was pretty sure she was gonna die. 

If not for Nott, she probably would have.

She means to tell Nott thank you. And she will, eventually! But thinking about what she’s going to say to Nott means thinking about what happened, and why Nott had to save her in the first place, and that makes her sick, in a way that has nothing to do with the churning of the ocean outside.

“I….” Jester’s hand clenches around her paintbrush. “It’s fine. I mean, the dragon really is dead. Very dead.”

“Still hurt us, though. And it really hurt you.”

“Well, it got Nott a lot, too,” Jester snaps, suddenly irritated. “And Nott almost died, and she really didn’t need to, especially not saving me, so why aren’t – why aren’t you talking to her? I’m okay, Beau! See? I’m still smiling!”

Beau is watching her with that sharp look she gets when she’s dissecting someone, and she’s seen Beau do that to a lot of people, and it only makes her angrier. So right now her smile looks a little more like a snarl than anything properly happy, but it’s fine! It’s still a smile, and Jester’s okay! The damn dragon is dead and Nott and the Traveler saved her even after everyone else left her behind and  _besides_  she can’t let anyone see her upset! She’s a joy and a terror unto the world and a little seed of chaos and if she isn’t then people are going to see her  _unhappy_  and then they’ll leave her behind again —

“People don’t always smile when they’re happy,” Beau says softly, shattering her train of thought, “and don’t always cry when they’re sad.”

“Well, this is just how I am,” Jester says stubbornly, throat traitorously tight. It’s kinda hard to breathe. “I’m always happy.”

“You can’t always be happy,” Beau continues, just as stubborn. She reaches for one of Jester’s hands, the one clasped around a paintbrush, and pries it from her white-knuckled grip. “No one can. Trust me. Think how many grumpy people Nott’s robbed, y’know? Everyone’s grumpy at some point or another. You know me,” Beau says with a little laugh, “I’m grumpy every day before the sun rises.”

“You’re grumpy every day before breakfast,” Jester points out quietly, hand draped along the little bedspread now that she doesn’t know what to do with it. She tucks it back against her chest. “But we’re different, Beau. I’m not grumpy and I’m not sad either.”

Beau sits back, looking inexplicably disappointed. Jester looks at her hands. She’s fine, she really is. She just needs a couple of minutes alone and then her smile will sit properly on her face again. 

“My parents were dicks,” Beau says suddenly, and Jester looks up. Beau isn’t curled in on herself like Jester is, knees to her chest, but she’s sharper in small ways: the twitch of her fingers, the quiet anger in her brow. “You…you know that. My father wanted a son, and my mother never said no. And they were my family, you know? What I got born with. What I got stuck with.”

“I’m sorry,” Jester says quietly, and means it. She wishes everyone could have a family as great as her mama. 

But Beau waves it away. “Nah, it’s fine. I mean, it’s not  _fine_ , but I’m not as cut up about it anymore, ‘cause they were family in name only, y’know? And now barely even that. But the thing about — about family, about having people who love you, is that it isn’t conditional. And Jester, I…” Beau looks away for a second, clears her throat. “I love you. You know that.”

“Yeah,” Jester whispers, eyes stinging. “I love you too.”

“Yeah. And I love all these idiots. Everyone on this stupid fucking boat, including our idiot captain. Even Caleb, even though he’s grumpy like  _all_ the time.” 

Jester giggles quietly. “He’s  _always_  grumpy. And sad.”

“Yeah,” Beau nods. “Exactly. But we don’t leave him behind just because he’s sad.”

“I’m not worried about that — ”

“Jester,” Beau interrupts, and reaches for her hand again, except this time it doesn’t have a paintbrush in it. “Listen. If you wanna – pretend, that’s cool. I get keeping secrets, keeping shit close to your chest, whatever. But all I’m trying to say is, we’re still gonna love you even if you’re sad sometimes, you know? This isn’t conditional. I guess I can’t speak for everyone, but from me at least. Even if you were grumpy for a whole month straight, I’d still love you.”

The stinging in her eyes redoubles. Jester shakes her head. “I’m fine,” she rasps, “I mean that’s a really nice sentiment but I’m — I’m okay — ”

“Okay,” Beau says, and pulls Jester close for a hug. She rests her chin on top of Jester’s head and there’s no way Beau could have known but this is just like what her mama did, and her soft chin fit perfectly between Jester’s horns just like Beau’s does now, and Beau is so warm and firm and Jester wraps her arms around Beau’s waist and buries her face in Beau’s collarbone and cries.

She was so  _scared_. The Mighty Nein, they’ve fought a lot, but that was a  _dragon_ , and Beau had touched the ball and she’d looked panicked right before she left and Caduceus had come out of the wall and sprinted away and she and Fjord were never quite in sync and Caleb hadn’t even seen her before he’d ran and they left Yasha behind altogether and Nott, Nott was the only one who even knew she was there and then she nearly  _died_  distracting the dragon to make sure it didn’t kill Jester—

Beau murmurs a quiet  _shhhh_  against her hair, face pressed softly to the top of Jester’s head. Her fingers are running comfortingly through Jester’s hair and the feeling makes her sobs come twice as quickly because this is what her mama did, too, and she’s missed it, and it feels so nice. 

Finally Jester empties all out. It’s not a fun feeling, being hollow. For a moment she worries she’ll spill cold empty all over Beau too, and she moves to pull away, but Beau only holds her; loose enough she could push away if she really wanted to, but she doesn’t really want to, so instead she cradles her forehead on Beau’s shoulder and tries very hard to think about nothing at all. 

She’s so tired.

“And needing help isn’t a bad thing either,” Beau says, so quiet Jester has to strain to hear it. “Back in the swamp, remember how I almost got killed by that stupid troll or whatever it was? I didn’t even realize how bad it was until later. Everyone needs help.”

“And everyone gets sad,” Jester repeats, voice hardly a breath. “I know.”

“You know?”

“Yeah, I know. I mean I know, like I knew that, of course, because technically I am also someone who gets sad, but I don’t…I mean, people like being around happy people! And normally I am a happy person, it’s just that the dragon was really scary and Nott almost died, and she almost died for me.”

“It isn’t a bad thing to need help,” Beau repeats, her fingers drawing little circles between Jester’s shoulderblades. Jester lets her eyes fall shut. That feels really nice. “And it’s okay to be sad and all that. Just let us know, okay? Let us help. We want to help.”

Jester thinks about that. She hates seeing people sad. She really hates making people sad.

But she thinks Beau was sad, too, before Jester cried all over her, and it seems silly that Beau would be sad before knowing that Jester was sad too, but it makes sense, in a very strange way, when Jester thinks about it. 

And she thinks, too, that if Nott or Caleb or Fjord or Yasha ever came to her and told her what makes them unhappy all the time, that she…she would be happy to listen to them. She would want to help them.

Jester just isn’t so used to people wanting to help her too.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and it is a little surprised to find that she means it.

“Thanks,” Beau says, words genuine and true. “Really. Thank you. I’m glad you…that you let me be here for this.”

Jester laughs quietly into Beau’s shoulder, followed quickly on the edge of a jaw-cracking yawn. “Silly,” she murmurs. “All I did was cry on you. I got your shirt all gross.”

“I can wash it.” Beau pulls back, a little, and softens when she sees Jester’s face. “Love you, Jess.”

Jester smiles, and this time, every inch of it is real. “Love you too, Beau.”

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me at @inkedinserendipity on [tumblr](http://www.inkedinserendipity.tumblr.com)!


End file.
